Tottenham: Vinai Venkatesham reveals bold Spurs target and confirms 'plan' for relegation

Spurs have finished 17th in the Premier League in each of the past two seasons, narrowly avoiding relegation to the Championship on the final day of last term.

De Zerbi arrived in March to help steer the club to safety after Thomas Frank’s stumbling reign and a disastrous interim period under Igor Tudor.

Tottenham sat winless and bottom of the table at the first international break this season but results have picked up since then. Three successive wins have left them in ninth place ahead of Saturday’s lunchtime trip to Leeds.

Venkatesham is confident that Spurs are now “on the right track” under De Zerbi and the club’s chief executive was ambitious when talking about long-term targets.

Speaking on The Sports Agents podcast, Venkatesham revealed the extremely lofty goals he believes are possible after a period of upheaval to bring in De Zerbi and overhaul the squad.

He said: “Ultimately, I guess the best way to answer your question is what are we here for? We’re here to win, right? The people that we’ve attracted to the football club, the long list of people, everyone is here to win.

Crossing the divide: Vinai Venkatesham was previously Arsenal’s CEO before joining Tottenham

PA

“If you work for Tottenham, when we talk about being here to win, that means we’re here to win the Premier League. That’s what this football club wants to do.

“It wants to win the Premier League and it wants to be consistent in the Champions League and it wants to ultimately win the Champions League.

“Can I tell you what year that’s going to happen in? Obviously I can’t but that’s what we’re aiming for and that’s what I want every single person that works for this club to think about every single day.

“I want them to never settle and I want us to be completely relentless in that pursuit.”

That is in stark contrast to the situation Spurs found themselves in during the final months of last season.

“It was really challenging, a really, really challenging period for the club,” Venkatesham admitted.

Asked if he had put a plan in place for the club being relegated, he added: “Yeah, you have to. You can’t not.

“To not make that plan would have been irresponsible. When I look back at that period, I take probably two things.

“I think our supporters were unbelievable. The last six or seven games, when they had faced probably the worst season they have ever faced, they got completely behind the team and the head coach and dragged us over the line. This is not normal.

“The second thing is sometimes going through something as traumatic as we went through last season bonds people. It puts even more fire in everyone’s belly to make sure something like that never happens again.”